>> production assistance for "inside washington" was provided by allbritton communications and politico, reporting on the legislative, executive, and political arena. >> all i can say is that we had a good evening and i appreciate it very much. >> this week on "inside washington," trying to break the ice but breaking bread. >> those who think this will be a come to jesus moment, they have done another thing coming. >> this is no way to run the

government. >> rand paul and an honest to god filibuster. >> i will speak until i can no longer speak. -- osamaeen led in's bin laden's son-in-law arrested and arraigned in new york. following sanctions, ugly threats from north korea. >> i don't think the regime in north korea wants to commit suicide, but they must surely know that would be the results of any attack on the united states. >> when boarding the aircraft, dump the shampoo, because your favorite pocketknife may be ok. >> it doesn't make any sense. captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- >> during his first term, the rap on president obama for members of both parties is that

he did not spend enough time stroking members of congress. wednesday night, he invited a dozen republican senators to dinner at jefferson hotel, just up 16th street from the white house. >> a very positive, encouraging, candid, focused on how do we come together. compromise is necessary and it is possible. the issue is how do we get there. >> a recent post tells us that -- a recent poll that the tough- guy stance on the budget is not going over well with voters. the president's approval rating is down seven percentage points from last month. after voters realize that the unthinkable was going to happen, the sequester, was going to take in. the president invited paul ryan and chris van hollen to lunch. the president and some of his adversaries are getting to meet will it move them closer to

compromise, charles? >> no, but i hate to be cynical. i agree, this is a rare event, and this is a direct result of a president who had been riding high in the polls and is really overshot a sequester. he thought he could carry on the partisan campaign against the gop. with that he has not succeeded, his numbers are down, and all of a sudden he is mr. hands across the aisle. >> nina? >> i don't think it is quite that simple. everybody efficacy -- everybody could see that we will be in these disastrous cliffy kinds of things every couple of months unless there is a grand bargain. he made in my view a serious mistake by not having

relationships with republicans, regular relationships, and grooming those relationships. one dinner and one lunch is not going to do he has to stop having golf plans all the time with his pals and have to play golf with people who are not his pals. >> colby? >> i am not sure if this charm offensive is going to get us anywhere. why am i somewhat skeptical? the president faces the same problem that speaker boehner faces with his own caucus. can the president deliver on the things that he wants to do, for example, on entitlement reform? we already had nancy pelosi saying no, we will not do anything with medicare that would change anything at all, we will not do anything with social security. can he deliver?

can boehner deliver? in looks good at this point, but both of them have tough caucuses to pull together. >> the politico headline -- "the grand bargain is back on the table." is this going anywhere? washe president's strategy to see if the gop would blink first, and do all of these and his lyrics to scare people. come on, canceling the white house tours? you are telling me they could not take money from somewhere else? it is not clear to me if the reaching across the aisle is going to do anything. >> let me point out that in february the economy added 236,000 jobs, unemployment fell to 7.7%, the dow this week was going through the roof. it would indicate to me at the -- at least that the economy is recovering. duty force budget cuts put it at risk?

>> the members of congress will recognize that they cannot do anything to slow down the recovery taking place. that might be the one thing to cause them to come up with something paid that is the only good part of this, that the numbers showed that the economy -- it takes the federal government to get out of the way or do something to facilitated. >> we are a $16 trillion economy. the cuts are advertised as about $80 billion. the cbo says that this year it will be half of that. it is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of gdp. it is not going to have any effect on the growth rate. what it has had an effect on is the president's popularity. this idea of cutting out white house tours i think is jumping

the shark. this is so obvious. so obvious an attempt by the administration to do something gratuitous, painful -- you know, spring break, there was a group of iowa tots who went on youtube and said, "please, let us come." that is when everybody said give me a break i calculated that the cost of the president's trip to play golf would fund a year of the white house tours. this is a farce, and by overshooting and scaring people unnecessarily, he lost a lot of ground on this, and that is white and he is trying a different t -- why he is trying a different tack. >> speaker boehner said the capitol is open. >> just last week was saying that the president is right to hold his ground on this.

doggone it, he is now saying he is ready to move in some wine. >> according to people at that meeting, there were things he said he was willing to compromise on -- social security, and medicare -- and those are all the things he has indicated before. the question is how much, and will there be a quid pro quo on the other side? it is not like it is a secret how you get to the kinds of cuts in revenue that you need to get to. you know what the choices are. you just have to make them v. >> lois? >> i think the sequester might be helping the markets. the government is telling us all to tighten up, and they are going to tighten up tr. wall street is a good signal --

two wall street, is a good signal. >> it is like a version of the hippocratic oath -- >> "don't just do something, stand there." >> "he philosophically believed it was best for the country and politically best for him, and now he needed because he has no choice." tell us more. >> he needed for his legacy, and he needs something, but he does not think it is going to be a grand bargain now. think he is coming to the point where incrementally he wants to make some bargains, but maybe giving up on the larger package. >> i don't think so. i think the white house understands that if they don't get a grand bargain, and the odds are, they will be doing this every month, all the time, and it will divert from every other priority they have, whether it is immigration,

alternative energy, you name it. >> this is a political town. he can read polls, the members of congress can read paul's. what they are reading is not heartwarming. >> my colleagues are not cynical enough. obama has a strategy. he wins in november, he wins going away, he wins on the fiscal cliff. he as the republicans on the rhine. the only obstacle to the agenda he announced in the inaugural address, a liberal agenda, if i want to be generous -- the only obstacle is the republican house did so he wants to crush it. he goes after republicans is very hard. he accuses them performing to throw orphans in the snow to protect company tax breaks. that has been his message since election day parade is not working now. people see him as a partisan

now. he will change strategy an attempt something different. >>keep those orphans out of the snow, colby. >> chaz. >> you are not cynical enough. >> chaz. republicans -- i think that you probably will find that there will be common ground on tax loopholes. they may find common ground on tax reform to produce more revenue. my concern is whether president obama can deliver on entitlement reform that he said he favored. he is going to run smack dab

into a clash with his democratic colleagues and and house. he will be in the same position speaker boehner was with this republican congress. >> lois, you agree? >> i do agree, and i also agree with nina that this would come month after month, and he wants to get immigration done, he wants to get some gun-control done. >> i think that is the ultimate long-term goal. i don't know whether he can control his own democratic caucus, but they have done pretty well on gun control. they let all the gun control groups be at the table. the quid pro quo was no sniping at each other, no commenting. you will not undermine as in public.

>> the beauty of republican on popularity is that our numbers are so low that they cannot go any lower. [laughter] if we are in a deadlock with obama, his numbers in the 50's are sinking, and house are at 8% and you cannot go below -- ours are at 8% and we cannot go below 8%. >> i have never heard that before -- the beauty of republican unpopularity. rand paul's filibuster. >> if we have the misfortune of electing someone you do not trust, who might kill innocent people, we're protected. >> if mr. paul wants to be taken seriously, he needs to do more than political stunts firing up the impressionable libertarian kids in the college dorms. >> it started with senator ron paul challenging the president's

nominee for cia director -- senator rand paul challenging the president's nominee for cia director over the policy on drone attacks. the senate approved john brennan 63-34, but not before a rand filibuster c. what was the point? what was the up to here? >> i think he personally believed that the united states , andd to be accountable o when he started this, people thought, oh, rand paul is at it, he will hold up the nomination. as he moved forward, people started listening and saying, you know, the guy is right, why can't the administration was said with a policy is? >> he had requested -- >> he got the answer finally. >> in writing from eric holder. >> the republicans, aside from

mccain and lindsey graham, really rallied behind him on this. >> some republicans were scared. they like authority, normally, and there is great hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle. pat leahy gets a lot of credit for voting against john brennan on the grounds that he had been asking the office of legal counsel an opinion from the justice department and got stiffed. having said that, if it was a stunt, it was a brilliant one. >> but how much it daylight to you want on the grounds? > -- on drones? >> this is where we get into a murky area. senator paul was right to frame the issue the way he did to get a clarification we needed. and not having a scattershot

approach, but just to clear, focused argument. now they are getting into another area with senator feinstein's committee where they talk about the current policy itself. -- drone policy itself. for example, "the washington post" editorial-page is calling for congressional approval for drone attacks. you're getting into questions of military tactics, and i am not sure you want to go that far. >> you are with rand paul on this one, aren't you, charles? >> i am grateful he raised the issue because we are at a point where people sick and tired of the administration blowing people the kingdom come well they are sitting in the living rooms. i'm talking about americans.

my neighbor was blown away at a chicken barbecue by his pool rid of all of the issues we're looking at in this country -- iran in nuclear, insolvency -- this is the most absurd. the problem was the president's attorney-general did not give an answer. it is not a serious issue. there is no conceivable circumstance where a president would use a drone in the united states, aside from an invasion of al qaeda from saskatchewan. the reason mccain is upset is that this is a way to get into the issue. rand paul's opposition largely has to do with the ground -- drone attacks overseas and that is what mccain wants to protect. >> a question about osama bin

laden's son-in-law. they brought him to new york and now they will try him in new york. why not taken down to guantanamo bay and squeeze every bit of information you can out of him? >> apparently they have the evidence to convict him of conspiracy and that is not recognized as a war crime, which is what you have to have taken to guantanamo. the defense department and everybody signed off on this. it posed a security problems in new york. >> the issue is not getting a guilty verdict on him. the issue is what is he now? there is a myth that iran and al qaeda, our enemies, whether it shiite or sunni -- he was harbored in iran and he was the conduit between iran and al qaeda. who cares if he ends up -- >> a deal --

>> sent him to guantanamo. instead he is in new york -- fore don't know what -- example, when he was in turkey, did the u.s. have access to him? you bet they had access to him. he had that connection with iran, but they would not take him back. they said, they are going to send him to kuwait. you think if they did not know that? >> he does not have a whole lot of information -- >> how do we know? >> well, this is from what i understand, that he was the son- in-law but he did not know a lot of what was going on. >> he was the son-in-law because he married his daughter after he had been an emergent figure in

al qaeda as a spokesman. he was not just a guy who arrived at the wedding. >> nobody said that. >> why would you shut them down by reading his miranda rights? >> maybe they did not shut him down -- >> i am glad we agree on something. new sanctions against north korea. >> north korea's ruling elite have been living large while impoverishing their own people and will play a direct price for this nuclear test. >> un ambassador susan rice after north korea's nuclear test last month and a rocket launched in december, the security council voted to impose new sanctions to make it more difficult for north korea to finance its weapons programs. it also targets the sale of luxury goods to the countries leadership, yachts and racing cars and stuff. while the rest of the population goes hungry, with korea is threatening a nuclear attack against the united states and is also saying, colby, that the

armistice is kaput. >> they don't have the capacity to do anything against the united states with nuclear- weaponss. hugo chavez died this week. he was more of a nuisance than a threat. north korea is a nuisance but more of a slight thread because of a nuclear-weapons. this is bombast coming out of them. china was signing on to the sanctions. the chinese are upset with what the north koreans are doing because it threatens to upset the nuclear-weapons shield in that part of the world. that threat may be more contained, unlike iran, for example. nobody is working that way on iran the way china is on north korea. >> the connection is that p'yongyang has probably come overwhelmingly likely worked with iran developing its

program. there was speculation that the test conducted in north korea about a month ago-been either on behalf of our way to accelerate or help the iranian program. >> lois? >> i agree with colby, china was the game changer did nothing to worry about is -- nothing to worry about is north and south getting trigger happy -- the thing to worry about is in north and south being trigger happy. >> and they killed a lot of south korean soldiers and a provocative way. >> what happens to venezuela now that chávez is gone? >> hugo, we hardly knew ye. that is one person on it you cannot say that. he is unique in that during his reign, communism and socialism

died, and he is the guy who a decade later revived it said that its spread to ecuador and bolivia and other places. i think that without him, it doesn't have a future. it never had a future because economically, it doesn't work. it would only work in his country, feebly because of all the oil he has. he wrecked the economy and they will continue but i am not for bankable last long time without the charismatic leader -- i'm not sure it will last a long time without the charismatic leader. >> that may be true, but the movement is enormously popular. they have had two elections in the last year, won a presidential election, the other gubernatorial alexian, and the opposition lost both. >> i think we need to see what is vice president deadspin he is trying to claim power and launching an anti-american -- i

think we need to see what the vice president dies. he is trying to claim power and wanting anti-american rhetoric. >> it was box cutters and small knives used by the terrorists on 9/11 that killed my colleagues. >> i think it is an overreaction. >> starting next month, knives and this size will be allowed on airplanes and a large bottle of shampoo will not . what about your favorite hockey stick, charles? >> why do you need and i hired on an airplane? second, have you ever been hit on the head with a bottle of shampoo? these rules are so idiotic. the reason we are arguing over them is that everybody understands that none of this

matter is. it is about who is coming on the plane, how they might react. it is not about what you are carrying. the way we stripsearch 3-year- old and 80-year-olds is insane. >> in fairness, they are worried about explosives. >> i don't know why they are doing this. are they going to stand with the tape measure and say, "wait a minute"? come on. >> i think the technical reason is that other countries do a lot of these and we are out of sync. but it doesn't make much sense. i agree that we need enhanced screening, but there is no way to be 100% sure. >> you could do some damage with a 2.36-inch -- >> you could do damage with my

ballpoint pen, pointed in the right direction with the necessary thrust. it is not the instrument, it is the president coming on the plan -- coming on the airplane. the way it is not in israel, or turkey -- is done in israel, or turkey, where they profiled the individual. not "profile," that is a bad word. [laughter] >> the israeli security people are very skillful. >> they have a lot of people to deal with, at. we have by an exponential factor more people coming through. >> the point is, it can be done. last word. see you next week.